Trehalose is a disaccharide consisting of two glucose units and has a sweet taste.
Trehalose has been used as a preservative, a stabilizer, a cell activity-retaining agent, a moisture-retaining agent, a cold-resistant agent, and an anti-freezing agent in industries as diverse as foods, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. Also, as a non-reducing sugar, trehalose does not react with amino groups and therefore does not cause undesirable browning and deterioration of organic substances. Thus, it is an attractive sweetener for certain foods.
Several methods of producing trehalose have been established, including those based on extraction, fermentation, culturing, and enzymatic conversion. For example, two enzymes, maltooligosyl trehalose synthase and maltooligosyl trehalose trehalohydrolase, have been used to convert maltooligosaccharides to trehalose (Maruta et al., Biosci Biotech Biochem 59:1829-1834 1995!). As another example, the genus Brevibacterium has been used to produce trehalose in a fermentation process (Tsuchida et al., European Patent No. 0555540A1 1993!).